Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America

Frontiersman is a fascinating new biography of that legendary man of the "wilderness", Daniel Boone. It is the story of a hero in constant peril--even captured and adopted by the dominant Indian tribe in Kentucky--who, against all the odds,survives to a ripe old age while almost all of his compatriots perish. Brown tells the exciting story with a detailed description of the life and culture of America's frontier at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. He captures the violence, the cruelty and the greed that seemed to drive all sides in this frontier battle for land and survival. An historic tale, beautifully told.

This is a funny and entertaining book, and beautifully written. It is packed with fascinating information about life on the frontier and in the backwoods-- what they ate, how they caught it, who they slept with and how they died. You will learn how they loaded and fired a musket, as well as why a dollar bill is called a "buck". The author does a masterful job of setting a larger historical and geographic context. The British, the French, the Indians, the struggle for control of the Ohio Valley, why Detroit and Louisville became what they did, the Revolution and Boone's ambiguous role in it. The book portrays the complicated relationship between whites and Indians realistically and without mawkish sentimentality. Boone was captured by the Shawnees and adopted by the chief Blackfish. He lived with the Shawnees for close to a year and had an Indian wife. At the same time two of Boone's sons were tortured, scalped and killed by the Indians, and Boone buried their remains himself where he found them. Not least, the book gives you the sense of what this lost world must have been like, and what kind of man Daniel Boone probably was. You get a detailed picture of how much America changed, and how much was lost and gained, within the single lifetime of Daniel Boone. This is a large accomplishment.

Brown brings alive life on the American frontier in the second half of the 18th century, an interesting mix ranging from global politics to battles over hunting rights with the indegenous Indian tribes. The description of living conditions during the era is truely fascinating - when Boone went on a "long hunt" by himself it was indeed long, at times lasting up to two years! Boone is more the cement that holds this wider-ranging story together, one researched with meticulous detail yet written in clear and easy to digest prose. A major accomplishment that covers a relatively unknown but critical part of the American story.

I've read a lot of American history but 'Frontiersman' gave me a better feel for life at the edge of the expanding American experience than any previous read. The ever-shifting relationships between hunters, gatherers and carpetbaggers of all stripes and ethnicities made simple survival paramount.... and still they pushed on. Brown captures both the romance and the grittiness of this and ties it all together in the life of its leader, the foremost of America's pioneers. Even the smells come through.

I've read a lot about Daniel Boone over the years, partly because (like the author) my ancestors were his peers and near neighbors in both Kentucky and southern Indiana. The shaky signatures of some of my pioneer ancestors appear on the same petitions and other legal documents as Boone's name. Reading about the events of his life gives me some insight to the lives of my own people. On the other hand, do we need another biography of the man? Naturally, there have been many written over the years, beginning even before his own death in 1820, and several new ones have appeared in just the past few years. I can't say that I learned anything really new from this volume, but it's certainly very readable -- perhaps because Brown is an amateur historian, not a professional academic. He doesn't stint the footnotes, though. And he includes a considerable number of illustrations, too. If you're new to the subject, and especially if you simply have a taste for reading biographies, this one would be an excellent place to start.